1Entrepreneurship

Entrepreneurship: A Field, An Activity, and A Way of Life

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Entrepreneurship is…

• A process• A chain of events and activities that

take place over a period of time• Bringing something new to the

marketplace

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A Definition

Entrepreneurship seeks to understand how opportunities to create something new arise and are discovered or created by specific individuals who then use various means to exploit or develop them, thus producing a wide range of effects.

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Key Activities

• Identifying an opportunity• Exploiting or developing this

opportunity• Running a new business

successfully

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An Intersection

Inspiration and Activation

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Intrepreneurs

Persons who create something new, but inside an existing company rather than through a new venture.

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Rising Interest in Entrepreneurship

• Media accounts of success

• Change in “employment contract”

• Change in basic values

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Macro and Micro

• Micro perspective—focuses on the behavior and thoughts of individuals

• Macro perspective—focuses primarily on environmental factors

• Both are key in understanding the entrepreneurial process

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The Process

• Recognition of an opportunity• Deciding to proceed and

assembling resources• Launching a new venture• Building success and managing

growth• Harvesting the rewards

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Key Phases

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Are Entrepreneurs Born?

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Influencing Factors

Individual-level, group-level, and societal-level factors influence every action and decision taken by entrepreneurs during all phases of the entrepreneurial process.

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Societal Group

Individual

EntrepreneurialProcess

Variables

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When Enterprising People and Opportunities Meet

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The Cutting Edge

• University-based technology transfer

• Incubators and science parks

• Entrepreneurial cognition

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“There are three principal means of acquiring knowledge: observation,

reflection and experimentation. Observation collects facts; reflection

combines them; experimentation verifies the result of that combination…”

--Diderot

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Systematic Observation

• Observe aspects of the world systematically

• Generate and test hypothesis• Obtain information on two variables• Use this information to predict

outcomes

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The Case Method

• Reflection• Combining facts in a careful and

systematic way to reach conclusions

• Central to case method and other qualitative methods of research

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Experimentation

• Systematically changes one variable in order to see if changes affect one or more other variables

• Involves active interventions• Determines causality

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Theory

• Moves beyond efforts to merely describe phenomena

• Moves to the point at which we can explain why and how things happen as they do

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Developing a Theory

• A theory is proposed• Predictions are made and tested by

research• Positive results increase confidence

in accuracy; negative results lead to modification of theory and further testing

• Theory is accepted or rejected

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“’Tis a sort of duty to be rich, that it may be in one’s power

to do good…”--Lady Mary Montagu

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To Do Good

• Entrepreneur’s products and services improve the lives of countless millions of persons

• Entrepreneurs are often extremely generous in their donations to worthy causes